


flocking together

by whytho



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Gen, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, im emotional about them all growing as separate people while still being important to each other ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 10:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10942293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whytho/pseuds/whytho
Summary: They meet again.Years later; weeks.





	flocking together

They meet again. 

Years later; weeks. 

 

 

At a coffeehouse, deep in the center of the Exchange--chance meeting, brown eyes catching. They sit, at one of the window tables looking out onto the bustling courtyard.

Jesper laughs easily, drink caught between his hands. Kaz smiles, small. 

Dances around unspoken wounds--the long gone girls. Jesper’s time in Ravka. Kaz's time on the Merchant Council. 

Business comes around. Both stand; they clasp hands. Jesper looks at Kaz; Kaz nods back.

They part. Both are back at the coffeehouse at the same time next week. 

 

 

Inej returns to the Van Eck house, when she comes back. Her visits are far and few between, but every time, she brings with her Zemeni fruits and Fjerdan music and, occasionally, a stray for Kaz to take in. 

Jesper grips her tight, a small body fitted neatly between two long arms, and then lets go. Softer, Wylan will touch her shoulder. They will smile at each other--Wylan’s bright, eager, Inej’s strong, and Jesper’s soft, watching--and then maybe they have dinner or haul luggage upstairs or sit, for just a minute, in front of the garden and the back canal. 

 

 

A Suli girl meets a Grisha in a small town in northern Ravka. The townspeople eye the two of them as they greet each other in the town square, clutching at each other tightly the second they get near enough. The Grisha is still wearing her _kefka_ to match the bright clumps ambling through the shops around them. The Suli girl’s long braid goes undone, swinging down her back in an inky black whip. Crowds glance away, and the town does not stop its bustle for their tears. 

 

 

Wylan Van Eck, in celebration of his new school for the arts, holds a party. 

Jesper forces Inej into a dress for the occasion. They have to spend an afternoon at countless shops, a tidy sum of Van Eck money spent, but Wylan helps her with her hair. 

In the garden, backlit by canal water lapping at the edge of the stone, Kaz finds her. 

They had talked, when Inej was just off her boat, a week before. But then, Inej wasn't in jewel-bright silks, and her hair wasn't falling, gentle, down her back, and Kaz was wearing gloves. 

Greetings are a sheet of mist settling over them. 

Wylan’s musicians can't be heard from the garden, but there is a music running through their veins. 

Kaz bows, hand out. A dance, offered. 

Inej curtsies, slips their hands together. An offer, taken. 

Kaz's skin is as rough as his voice against Inej’s skin. 

They make it through.

 

 

Jesper spends half a year with Sturmhund, with ships and guns and Ravka.

He learns more than everyone would have expected, even if some of it is at the hands of Genya Safin.

He goes to the markets, marvelling at the clothes and food and easy room for Grisha. He buys Wylan creamy stationary, a red-gold pocket watch, at least three music boxes. Inej gets a storybook-- _The Window Ghost,_ complete with pictures of shadowy figures in doorways that Jesper swears look just like her--and another knife. Marya gets paints and new brushes, Kaz gets a pot of _jurda_ and a new tie, and, for Nina, he buys a bracelet--Grisha glass, black as night. It looks like a sliver of the Ice Court and the first time she used her powers for death instead of life and Wylan's hair, once, after she had pulled off a saint’s miracle and lived. 

He gives it to her when she gets back to Os Alta, an easy arm looped around her waist, as they stroll through the palace gardens. 

 

 

Wylan Van Eck, esteemed son of the ex-esteemed merchant, is often times rumored to do business with the Barrel’s worst leaders. 

Unfortunately, these rumors are true, but he at least does it with style. 

On the days that business needs to be done--twice a week, sometimes, or maybe twice a season--he books a table at one of the better restaurants in Ketterdam, and there, he waits. 

His business associate will come late, always, suit crisp and cane loud against the restaurant's floor, and Wylan Van Eck will stand, pull a chair out, and sit back down. His associate will sit, too, smooth his hair, and then order, and the rest of the meal would _appear_ to be a cheerful meet-up between two friends. Of course, it couldn’t be, though- a reputable man like Wylan Van Eck would only meet with a bastard of the Barrel for business. 

At least, that’s what the society ladies watching their table from the corner tell themselves. 

 

 

Kuwei joins the Little Palace. 

Nina, fresh from Fjerda, nods to him the hallway. 

Neither try to start a conversation.

 

 

At the Slat, Nina borrows Inej’s old room for a night.

At the Slat, Nina knocks on Kaz's door. 

He opens it, eyes weary. The sight of her stirs them for half a second--too fast to read--before they return to blank normality. He leans on the doorway and gestures her in. 

Instead, Nina flings her arms around him.

Kaz freezes, sleeves touching neck. Hands touching shoulders. Cloth against cloth, skin against cloth, skin against air.

Slowly, Kaz hugs her back. Velvet rustles in the quiet; they breathe. 

The next morning, the Slat gets waffles, and no one tries out any soft, sad looks over their plates of cream and fresh strawberries.

 

 

Alys’ baby reaches five. 

She returns to the city to raise him--Wylan decided he needed an heir. No one raised a protest. 

Alys, it turns out, is not good as with care giving as she expected, and no one is willing to scrounge up a nanny from the depths of the city. She stays, but the care of her son falls mainly to Jesper, who gives it all the unbridled enthusiasm he has. 

Wylan tries to help, but most of his time is occupied with business. Still, he is always there at the end of the night when Alys reads a story, and sometimes he sings lullabys when stories can't quite bring sleep. 

That first summer, there is a business meeting in Ravka, and Inej offers her boat for transport. The four of them--Wylan, in a stark black suit, bright red tie looped carelessly around his neck; Jesper, bright purple suspenders matching those of the little boy’s on his shoulders; and Inej, smiling faintly as she looks out across the sea--the four of them step off the ship together to meet Nina at the docks. 

She is bright in the crowd, bobbing up and down on her toes as she searches for them. Her eyes meet Jesper’s first, and Wylan may be whip-fast as he takes the little boy into his arms but it is still too slow. Nina reaches their group within seconds, and both Inej and Jesper try to tackle her as Wylan watches, child in his arms, broad smile stretching further. 

Nina hugs Jesper first, both of their coats flaring out as he swings her around, and then Inej, tightly, for a beat and a half. She reaches for Wylan after, careful with the little boy in his arms, and wraps her arms around them both. 

He smells like sea air; she smells like perfume--roses. The boy between them is soft and quiet, and his pale hair tickles Nina’s chin, and Jesper is already piling their luggage into a carriage. The docks are noisy, like Ketterdam’s, and Inej is a strong shadow next to them, and Nina’s ear is brushing Wylan’s. 

They break apart. She smiles distractedly at the child in his arms, blond and dark eyed and solemn, and he stares back. 

“Nina,” Wylan says, hair gold and eyes strong and hands soft against a little boy’s back, a faint smile in his voice, “I’d like you to meet Matthias,” and Nina does not cry out but she gasps, silent, as her eyes dampen.

**Author's Note:**

> look,,,..,..,,,,, i really love the six of crows,,,,,,,,,...,..,..,,,,,,,,,,
> 
> with this-i'm thinking that nina took a bit of time to get matthias' body to fjerda, but eventually made it back to os alta at least for a while. she stayed with the grisha there, traveled a lot, and moved throughout the world trying to reduce the stigma people had against grisha. it was somewhat successful in novyi zem, not as much in the wandering isles or the upper parts of fjerda, but she did make a difference everywhere. some of it was in very contained areas and some of it really only affected the younger people, but a couple other grisha followed her lead and led diplomatic missions intending to normalize grisha powers, and then it started spreading. 
> 
> wylan stayed in ketterdam, just keeping his father's business up, but often took his work to his house in the country. it's very relaxing; marya usually came along. he inherited his father's place on the merchant council and used it to try and subtly, quietly get more women in business and decrease ketterdam's wealth gap. wylan also started a lot of quiet programs that intended to lower the risks kids in the streets faced and made some sort of medical help more available if people needed it. he and jesper were in different countries for a while? and really kind of stretched themselves out as separate people while still in a relationship (marya read for him while jesper was gone)
> 
> jesper visited ravka, because kaz hooked sturmhund up with jesper and they were both enthusiastically eager to get each other's views on their stuff. jesper actually helped him design tools for farming, which made a big difference to the newly healed unsea area and really improved ravka's agriculture. he also helped fabricators work on something similar to a sewing machine, and all this had the added bonus of letting him learn some fabrikation. he didn't actually ever talk to kuwei there, even tho they were in town at the same time-kuwei stayed in the little palace and jesper was all over. 
> 
> inej, of course, sailed the seas. her parents were in ravka so her home base was there, but she visited ketterdam a lot and mostly stayed with the van ecks when she was there. she kept in really good contact with everyone because she was all over-she spent some time tracking down specific slave traders and some time just cruising looking for illegal activities. she also did some undercover work for wylan and his more moral coworkers by tracking down the ships of companies known to have unjust business practices, like less than legal trading deals and using underpaid laborers and more but she mainly focused on slavery. 
> 
> kaz... bounced around. he spent a lot of time in the barrel, of course, but then he tried conning people into thinking he was reputable, which surprisingly enough worked for a little while-he even got to help out the merchant council with a small committee's work. (wylan put him on it as a joke but he ended up getting really invested in it and doing a lot of good work for the city) then he spent a season in the southern colonies, took a two-week jaunt around the wandering isle trying to herd sheep back onto a ship to industrialize the wool industry, got pekka rollins to confess to a lot of tax evasion, and reformed ketterdam's sewage system.
> 
> kuwei was doig who tf knows what i dunno he was probably setting shit on fire man who the fuck (yeah but actually jesper did give some notes to fabrikators he worked with about the stem of the jurda plant and kuwei, with the help of a lot of fabrikators, found a cure for jurda parem. in celebration, he lit shit on fire lmao)


End file.
